Chile Forum

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well here is a crux for chile, what to do about the state owned mining company.
on the one hand I am a bit concerned that cutting codelco loose in the market might lead to higher taxes; but, on the other I think these state dogs need to be privatized as they are fairly consistently loosing money and piling on debt for lack of options to go to the market for more capital. they can issue bonds, but not stock for instance.

Codelco is too big to sell. It's like Aramco in copper and no one knows how to value that thing. Someone told me the length of tunnels in Codelco's Machali mine is 4500 km. Would you wanna buy into this kind of operation?

So it's not sellable on its own merits because of the legacy, but, more importantly, it's not sellable because of how integrated it is into the Chilean economy. It's like selling and arm and a leg to pay off your debt.

Also, the Chilean government being an independant player on the copper market is a big deal. It's like the Russian government in the oil market. It has a lot of sway. If Codelco is sold, it will become part of the copper cartel, and sale proceeds will be the last money Chile will ever see from copper.

There are plenty of privatly traded copper companies and other mining companies to set compariable prices of an IPO for codelco, and chile get's plenty of revenue from the other miners in chile. BHP for instance almost produced as much as as codelco last year. hardly some mystery as to what it is worth.

There are plenty of privatly traded copper companies and other mining companies to set compariable prices of an IPO for codelco,

Hm, no, not at all. I mean BHP and Rio will be happy to take over Codelco, no doubt about that. And then what? Are they going to buy Chile free public education or upgraded medical system? Have they done that in any other country? https://www.thebalance.com/the-10-bigge ... 10-2340291

and chile get's plenty of revenue from the other miners in chile. BHP for instance almost produced as much as as codelco last year. hardly some mystery as to what it is worth.

I'd love to see the figures of the revenue Chile gets from the other copper miners in Chile. I'm just not going to hold by breath for the moment. 'Diversified' companies like BHP, Rio and the rest of them that
are operating around the world are set up that way in order to be able to manipulate their numbers and minimize payouts to any specific government.

True, but why IPO a state owned mining company for short term interests and then mere royalties when you can own the whole shooting match long term? The whole privatisation scam "leading to increased competition and lower prices" has long been proven to be complete bullshit. It´s only brought about price gouging for the benefit of shareholders, consumers, who're the majority, get screwed.

Considering all the TPP-11 pro-multinational agenda, I would very much prefer to keep some bargaining power in the hands of a relatively small non-aggressive state, despite it being not as efficient as some well-run private entity. (Also, too many big businesses here are run by slackers, thanks to the pituto-fueled oligopoly.)

Even dysfunctional governments still have some social obligations while corporations exist only to serve their shareholders by milking the population and lobbying more benefits for themselves. The less economical power states have, the bolder corporations get.

"Chile is the world’s leading producer of copper, accounting for 32 percent of world production (Figure 1) and 28 percent of world reserves."

﻿"The main direct contributions of copper to Chile’s development have been as a source of foreign exchange from exports and as a source of government revenue. Its contribution to direct employment and even to GDP has been much more limited. (The copper mines created only 50,000 direct jobs. The contribution of copper to GDP averaged 6.2 percent ﻿over the 1980-2010 period. On the fiscal side, the contribution of Codelco since 1990 was equivalent to 13 percent of total tax revenues, exceeding 30 percent in some years. If taxation of large private mining is added, the contribution reached a record one-third of total tax revenue in 2006 and 2007, but was only 9.1 percent in 2014."

So this tells me foreign miners' fiscal contribution to Chile has been basically negligible (why am I not surprised?), even though, as admin pointed out, they extract almost as much copper as Codelco.

And I'm not even sure if their Codelco's total tax revenue computation includes the 10% of sales Codelco used to pay to carabineros, since it was a special arrangement under a special law. If it doesn't then foreign miners are screwing Chile even harder.

that is 10% to the military, not the carabineros. even the military said they were fine with ending that law as long as they had sufficient budget runway to do long-term planning for projects. that one definitly needs to go.

actuelly i would be more inclined to see chile replace most of its defense spending on crusty old expensive technology with drone programs and a smaller manned disaster relief contingency.

pretty much nothing chile has right now would stand-up in a fight for more than a few days against any even moderatly modern military. so it is basically a waist of money. chile could field a lot of drones for the price of a couple old f-16s.

what is interesting, this is another case of listing countries in latin america growth as evidence, and completely skipping chile (and peru, Panama, etc), while sighting Colombia's rather anemic growth last year as evidence for the thesis. Why would you not site two of the best performing economies in latin america, if you are trying to make a case for latin america overall?

Meanwhile the author went to great lengths to put lipstck on the that Argentinan pig next door. Good thing pork bellies prices are up, because pork is all that will be driving the Argentina economy for the next several years. hell, they even mentioned Venezuela as a regional growth factor; but not chile? Not Peru?